The Top 50 Overall VMware Influencers

The ecosystem surrounding VMware and its virtualization and cloud infrastructure software is still vibrant. A close-knit group of bloggers, podcasters, evangelists, and kibbitzers grew out of forums and user groups over the last 15 years. Some work for VMware, some for other tech vendors, some for consultants and resellers, and others work delivering IT for their employers. Blogging might be on the wane elsewhere, but this community of technologists still has an active blogosphere: see this list of top virtualization blogs by popular vote and by the numbers. Those that don’t blog still follow each other on Twitter.

As a result, influencers in this ecosystem help educate people on products, on best practices, and on trends. The conversation is usually technical and relentlessly practical.

Here we’re presenting our list of top 50 overall influencers for VMware. This is an algorithmic list based on who is followed the most on Twitter by other “insiders.” It maps reasonably well to my own subjective sense of this community that I’ve been a part of since 2005; however, it has a lot of historical signal (ex-VMware CTOs, for instance, who were followed by lots of VMware insiders) and may show other biases in following behavior (e.g., there are no women in the Top 50.) We’ll explore different aspects of the broader data set later. See the notes following this list.

Notes

Why are there 55 people in a list of top 50? Originally we omitted several accounts that Little Bird had categorized as “Organizations” (I’m looking at you, @PunchingClouds), so after publications we added those 5 people back in.

Why are there no women? This is purely an algorithmic list based on bootstrapping a network of insiders who follow each other. There are many women on the longer list (Amy Lewis @CommsNinja #66, Jane Rimmer @Rimmergram #69, Yanbing Li @ybhighheels #96, Susan Gude @susangude #96, Jodi Shely @rytalws #124). I believe this Twitter following behavior doesn’t reflect their actual influence in the real world. Interested in having more VMware influential women in your feed? We’ll publish a follow-up list.

What is the algorithm? We are using the tool Little Bird, which looks at mutual following relationships on Twitter to discover and graph a network and then rank its members by their degree of connectedness. Because it ranks influence by who follows whom within the network, not just raw follower counts, the list captures both who is listening currently as well as historical following patterns. Because the VMware community on Twitter grew up in 2010–2013, many of those relationships remain captured in this list, since people rarely unfollow others who change jobs or become less active. (e.g., ex-VMware CTO #11 Steve Herrod).

VMware and Dell EMC: Most of the folks on this list work for VMware or Dell EMC. VMware has hired many people who were active in the community, often in technical marketing, professional services, or the Office of the CTO , and they are well-represented on this list. VMware employees who did not have large follower lists are naturally “on stage” and get followed at a higher rate as they join the VMware ecosystem (e.g., that newcomer #40 Michael Dell). As we extend the list over 50 we see many more people not employed by VMware itself, including customers and channel partners.

To PR pros: please, don’t blindly pitch this whole list of nice people. They may or may not be open to cold tweets or emails for press releases or briefings from your client. We’ll publish a follow-up list of top influencers who don’t work for tech vendors, and that may be a more useful list for you.

Brought to you by the Influence Marketing Council, a membership organization for B2B technology marketers who work with influencers, advocates, and community. The IMC helps its members grow great programs and make great content through meaningful relationships that help grow the business. For more information on joining the IMC, go to influencemarketingcouncil.com